UNESCO list recognizes the Chung Collection at the University of B.C.

UNESCO list recognizes the Chung Collection at the University of B.C.

The naming of the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection at UBC to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO's Canada Memory of the World Register underscores the importance of the immigrant experience to B.C. and Canada, but also the stories of diaspora everywhere.

The Chung Collection at the University of B.C. has been recognized by a UNESCO listing, putting the small museum of Canadian artifacts assembled by Vancouver surgeon Wallace Chung and his obstetrician-gynaecologist wife Madeline Chung alongside others of national historical importance.

The naming of the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection at UBC to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s Canada Memory of the World Register underscores the importance of the immigrant experience to B.C. and Canada, but also the stories of diaspora everywhere, said UBC librarian Susan Parker.

“You could say it is a collection of historical (items) that are so relevant to the people of Canada and B.C. and Vancouver,” said Parker. “It’s also about global migration and preserving the story of Chinese diaspora as they struggled and travelled in the new world. It’s about resilience and triumph in the face of adversity.”

Also on Wednesday, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO named the Archives of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Manitoba and the Notman Photographic Archives in Montreal as newcomers to the list.

The three collections were described by the commission, which is a bridge between Canadians and the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, as being “of unique, authentic and irreplaceable documents detailing significant portions of Canada’s history.”

Other collections on the list of 16 highlight the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the contributions of Marshall McLuhan, and the discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto.

The museum at UBC was started by the Chungs 20 years ago when they donated over 25,000 items to the university.

Recently, Wallace Chung spoke to Vancouver Sun reporter John Mackie about the collection, regaling him with stories and research behind all kinds of artifacts and documents as well as his own experience growing up in a Victoria tailor shop owned by his father at a time when Chinese immigration was banned. He graduated from McGill’s medical school in 1953 in the years after the Chinese Exclusion Act was revoked, and returned to B.C. to begin a career at Vancouver General Hospital and UBC, where he eventually became head of surgery.

Madeline Chung, who also grew up in Victoria, became known for delivering over 7,200 babies during her career, many of them of Chinese-Canadian descent, starting in the mid-1950s to the early 1990s. Her practice in East Vancouver on Broadway was one of the first by a Chinese doctor outside of Chinatown at a time when attitudes were changing, but there was still racial discrimination. Her work flourished as policies changed, immigration surged and her waiting room filled with patients who not only valued her medical expertise, but her ability to relate linguistically and culturally.

The recognition by UNESCO comes as the two prepare to make another major contribution to the collection, including some of their most-treasured items such as the bill of sale from the first property sold to a Chinese person in Canada in 1858 and original volumes of Early Vancouver by Vancouver’s legendary first archivist, Major Matthews, who wrote them but didn’t have the money to publish them all.